A school in the mall

Informatics Holdings Phils. Inc. president and chief executive officer Leo Riingen. likes to watch things, particularly businesses, grow. "That is why I did not want to handle an already big business like San Miguel Corp. I wanted to build a business from scratch," he said.

And that’s what Riingen has done for the Philippine franchise of Informatics Computer Institute, the number one in IT education and training in Singapore.

Informatics Computer School opened for business in SM Megamall. "Many criticized me for locating my school in a shopping mall but I have always believed that the changing lifestyle of Filipinos would ultimately lead to one-stop do everything in one place," he said.

The company earned P50,000 but spent P350,000 during its first month of operations. To create awareness, the company spent P600,000 worth of full-paged ads in broadsheets that brought up revenues to P150,000 at the end of the second month. Another P300,000 was spent for ads. By the end of the fourth month, Informatics had losses amounting to P1 million.

Business improved so that, by the end of the six month, revenues and expenses intersected. Before 1994 ended, the lone branch of Informatics showed promise as revenues reached P3 million per month.

"If you got a really good product, you have to communicate the benefits so people would try them out," said Riingen.

Benefits

To date, Informatics has educated and trained more than 300,000 students, including celebrities and chief executive officers of big companies.

"At 40 branches nationwide, we have only about one-fourth the size of computer schools that have been here a long time but we are second in terms of top of mind recall, largely because we are located in the malls," said Riingen.

"What sets us apart is our use of the British system of education. You enroll first in a certificate program for a year. If you finish that, we give you a diploma in IT. You can already work as a systems analyst or a programmer or a web developer. Then, if you want to get an advanced diploma in IT, you enroll for another year, even while you are already employed. But if you still want a bachelor’s degree, you enroll for another two years and become a software engineer or an IT product manager," he said.

To get that certificate or diploma, the student must pass exams given by the University of Cambridge.

The bulk of Informatics’ branches are franchisees. The franchise fee is currently pegged at P3.3 million although the total capital investment may go as high as P8 million because of the high rentals in mall locations. The biggest business model costing P8 million can house eight fully air-conditioned classrooms and offer the diploma and advanced diploma courses (IT training. The international college offers the bachelor’s degree (IT education).